Announcing the Inaugural Winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

And in news from the University of Arkansas, the winner of the inaugural Etel Adnan Poetry Prize is Lebanese-American writer and illustrator Jess Rizkallah. Her poetry collection, the magic my body becomes, will be published in Fall 2017 by the University of Arkansas Press. The prize is named after, as you can see, the poet and artist Etel Adnan.

This collection explores family history, love, religion, language, and gender expectations within the Arab American experience. Rizkallah addresses the middle ground of being an Arab American, of being too Arab for America and too American for an ancestral country. The poems illustrate the difficulty in separating those aspects of identity that are come by organically from those which are acquired second-hand.

“As I go through Jessica Rizkallah’s poems, I keep saying to myself, ‘No poet this young should be this good’,” said series editor Hayan Charara. “Of course, we’re lucky that she is. Her inventive language, her humor, her tenderness, her insights will astonish us.”

Rizkallah lives in Boston and New York. She's an alumna of Lesley University, an M.F.A. candidate at New York University, and founding editor at Maps for Teeth magazine/pizza pi press. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Nailed Magazine, Button Poetry, and HEArt Online.

“Something about her poetry is already ahead of us,” Charara said. “Her voice is that of the next generation.”

Every year the University of Arkansas Press together with the Radius of Arab American Writers accept submissions for the Etel Adnan Poetry Series and award the $1,000 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize to a first or second book of poetry, in English, by a writer of Arab heritage. Since its founding in 1996 the Radius of Arab American Writers has celebrated and fostered the writings and writers that make up the vibrant and diverse Arab American community.

The full report here.